


P is for Proving

by OtakuElf



Series: YADAA (Yet Another Dragon Age Alphabet) [16]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Deep Roads, F/M, Golems, Thaigs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:44:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5247077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuElf/pseuds/OtakuElf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you prove yourself if you are not a fighter?</p>
            </blockquote>





	P is for Proving

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Lunamoth116 for beta reading!

Kalash Aeducan had been born to explore. He said so, to anyone who would listen. Kalash was of the cadet branch to the ruling clan, though he avoided telling anyone his family name unless he absolutely had to. Tell someone your name was Aeducan, and you were immediately embroiled in politics, whether you meant to be or not.

Kalash did not intend to be. Not until he had proven himself. 

Oh, not in the Provings. He was not a fighter in that respect. He was a dwarf, and as such compact and solid, with muscular strength. He was not quick, though. Kalash was slow and steady. From the beginning his family had gone to the Provings, talking about the day when he would stand in the stadium to represent their noble house. “What do you mean you won’t be fighting in the Provings?” his aunt Varad had said in shocked surprise, “You’re of the nobility. Even the King has to prove himself.”

Kalash would prove himself in some other way. Drawing blood and leaving bodies on the sand proved nothing so far as he was concerned. And so he’d started looking for a way to prove himself.

He’d failed as an engineer, as a tunnel builder, because he was careful and uninterested in gold or lyrium or precious gems. Not even the Shaperate would approve his tunneling, for there was no advantage to it.

He’d failed as a son, his parents told him, because he’d failed to beget an heir to the household. He tended to pick unsuitable girls for breeding with, and had begot entirely female children. Well, that had, of course, angered the females. They were using him as a means of bettering their status in life. To do that they’d need a male of the Aeducan line to bring their ranking up. Kalash’s noble background was the draw, and as such entirely the reason why he was approached by the noble hunters. Therefore he lacked any interest in these women (or their offspring) after they’d coupled.

He failed as a friend, because he never bragged about “donning the velvet hood” - as his friend Oghren called it - and he never had money to buy rounds at the local taverns. Kalash could not understand why Oghren was still around, because certainly that was all he did anymore - drink. He’d lost his will to prove himself after - well, after.

Kalash spent his time sneaking into the Deep Roads. There was no reason for him to sneak. He could have gotten a dispensation from the Assembly, or from the Head of his family. All of the special dispensations came tied up with restrictions. He could go if he could bring back artifacts or treasure. But he could only go where the dispensation stated he was to go.

Where was the fun in that?

And he was no thief, or ruffian attempting to rob travelers or dig up ancient artifacts of great worth. For one thing, he was too slow to be a pickpocket, and too disinterested to be one of those who blackjacked prey in the alleyways. 

Instead, he traveled through the Deep Roads reconstructing maps. Kalash cleared rubble and rediscovered doorways leading to places where the ancient dwarves had lived. Though not, to this date, to find ancient treasures. He had a knack for listening to the stones and hiding from the darkspawn and spiders, from the tezpadam, the deepstalkers, which to his mind sounded like the squeaking toys that dwarven children are given to gnaw on while their teeth are coming in.

It wasn’t that he was immune from the taint. He avoided Blighted areas like the plague they were. He was not proof against the poison of the deepstalkers. He was not swift and silent like the casteless who could move through the shadows and avoid the notice of living things. 

Kalash was slow. He was steady. He moved quietly so that he could hear the thaigs and the rocks speak around him. He read the movements of the magma, and he could see in whatever low light the magma gave off. Because he was curious about it, he’d figured out the chemical combination of stones that created the long-burning torches still lighting spaces down in the deepest of the Deep Roads. Kalash avoided lyrium like the Blight. Lyrium led to addled miners and workers who would drive a pick through your brain to ensure that nobody discovered their treasure.

Yes, Kalash knew that the lyrium sang. He could hear it. He wasn’t deaf, just disinterested. Except when the lyrium song changed. With that change came the darkspawn, or the miners, or the Stone only knew what. Kalash avoided lyrium, but it was ever present, and he used the lyrium song to stay safe.

It was lonely, spending so much time in the tunnels, but there were few that Kalash would wish to spend time with, and fewer still who would desire to join him. That made it easier to avoid the predators in the dark. Kalash would find a tiny crack in the seam of a stone and squeeze in, pulling the rock chips and moss around him. Not only did it hide him, it kept him warm while he was sleeping. You couldn’t do that with more than one person.

It was through one of those cracks that Kalash felt a breath of air. The ancients had built incredible airways through each and every aspect of the Deep Roads. Air flowing out of a crack was one way of telling if there was a space behind a wall of rock.

Kalash had not noticed it at first in his bed for the night. It was when he woke up with a crick in his back, stiff and sore from the cold draft, that he realized what he was feeling. Air, and good air. Something was behind this wall. A large something by the feel of the cool, fresh air.

The Aeducan wriggled - slowly - to bring out his tap-hammer, and just as slowly began to chip into the crack. The stone tasted fine - not sour like some places that were blighted. Pulling a scarf over his nose to prevent stone lung sickness, he began to work his way into the crevasse. Slow and steady, he opened a way forward - tiny compared to the palaces of the Diamond Quarter, but large enough for Kalash to move forward an inch at a time.

Passing chips back along behind him, Kalash took his time to stretch muscles sore from the cramped positioning. It was dark here, closeted away from the large halls of the Deep Roads and their magma rivers. The progress was measured by marks that he engraved into the walls of the crevice. Hours went by before a cramping stomach and nagging bladder forced the dwarf backward and out of the hole in the stone. Grumbling at the delay, Kalash took care to look and listen before finding a private spot to eliminate and pile up granite chips. 

It took him days to craft his way to the end - to the moment where a tap along an easily-felt cracking in the rock opened up a hole into a larger space. The bit of granite disappeared, the head of the tap-hammer pushing through the hole, and only saved from falling by Kalash’s quick recapture of the hammer’s handle. 

The only sound once he had grasped the hammer tightly was his breathing in the small space. Light, however, came through the hole along with the air. Dim light, from chemical torches and not magma. No heat. Kalash expanded the hole as quietly as possible. From time to time he listened, waiting for the stone and the echoing space beyond to tell him of darkspawn or some other denizen of the dwarven lands.

In the distance he heard moving water. That was a distinctive sound. No rumbling crackle of magma - a good thing, actually. Much as the dwarven lands relied on the heat, light, and movement of magma to provide for their communities, it was not a sign of stability. 

The light coming through the opening meant crafting; it was not something that could accidentally occur in nature. Taking his moment to peep through, Kalash caught his breath. A thaig. He’d found a thaig. Scrabbling in his belt pouch for the maps, he held them up to the light beaming through the opening. This was not one of the thaigs listed as lost by the Shaperate. This was an entirely separate one. This was something that would prove his worth! A discovery so important his name would be remembered in the Shaperate for something other than failure.

Kalash thought that his joy would burst out of his chest. Pushing his face against the hole, his beard getting caught on the jagged bits of chipped granite, he tried to figure out a way down into the thaig. His perch was up on a wall, high above the floor of the thaig. Looking down, he could see no movement. A good sign. He watched, waiting, for some reason he should not descend to the thaig floor. Patience was an acceptable virtue so far as Kalash was concerned.

If nothing came toward the sound of his hammer now, then it was most likely safe. Spiders and deepstalkers, while not curious creatures, knew that meals and threats to their nests both came with the sound of intruders. 

After a break to refresh himself, that time spent eating and silently stretching while watching through the hole in his tiny tunnel, Kalash flexed his fingers and took up the hammer once again. He chipped away at the rock, doing his best to catch the stone pieces before they fell out into the thaig below. Foolish, he knew. Any other of his people would have bashed their way through. Best not to confuse things when he was examining the ground below.

Fashioning an outcropping hook for belaying his rope, Kalash got caught up in the adventure of it all. It wasn’t until he had pulled the moss fiber rope out of his pack, had tied the knot thoroughly and tight around the belaying point, that he forced himself to calm down. This might be a trader post, and rightfully forgotten. It might not be anything of importance. Time to be calm and careful.

Checking again for sounds and movement below, the solitary dwarf carefully climbed through the window he’d created and rappelled down the wall to land on the stone-carved roof of a building. There was a curlicue of carved stone at the edge of the roof line, and Kalash wrapped the last few feet of his rope around it. Best not to have anything moving and attracting attention. As still as the air was now, there was movement to keep it so fresh. Kalash didn’t want to be distracted by the rope swinging, and even worse, think something moving about was the rope when it was not.

This was a low, flat-roofed building, and it was only a matter of a few moments to hang from the ledge of its roof and drop to the alley below. Kalash examined his surroundings before stretching as high as he could manage. Joints popped and cracked, abused muscles stretched. It was good to be able to stand, though he was a bit stiff. To get back on the roof, all he had to do was put a foot there on the rock wall, hoist his body up, grab the eaves and pull himself onto the roof.

Useful. Next item on his list was to find that water. Kalash was a solitary man, but even he valued a clean body. This might also be a time he could build a small fire and make some tea. Hot rations instead of dried and cold would be a treat.

The river was cold and refreshing. There was a place along the side where detritus had caught, forming a sandbank. Unlike much of the water in the Deep Roads, the floor of the river was not a limestone base. This entire cavern had been created out of granite. It was carved not by the hand of nature, but deliberately with dwarven tools. There were no stalactites, no stalagmites, no natural columns to be seen. Interesting. Dwarves were, like all other creatures, prone to using what came easily. This was not, strictly speaking, a cavern. It was carved out of the living rock. And it was mammoth.

The water tasted metallic, as it should, but there was also a hint of something else. Something reminiscent of green growing things. That put Kalash on his guard. Green growing things meant a connection to the upper lands. There must be an entrance somewhere close by, which also meant the possibility of strange creatures finding that entrance and ending up in the Deep Roads.

A wash did him a world of good. Kalash took the chance and washed every piece of clothing he had with him. He wasn’t fool enough to take a nap while they dried, though he was tempted. It was quiet and peaceful in this place. It felt safe.

Clad in his just-washed, still wet loincloth, the dwarf began to gather bits and pieces of washed-up burnables from along the river. By the time he had found enough to make a cooking fire and bundled them into a carriable packet, his clothing was dried.

Dressed, his pack on his back, the bundle of burnables over his shoulder, Kalash found his way back to the original building he’d landed on, and looked for somewhere to fortify for a sleeping place. Stowing the bundle in the alley, he walked around to the front of the building. The door was closed, but unlocked. There were no runes stating the purpose of the structure, but it seemed likely that it was a maintenance area. Lifting the latch, Kalash let himself into the building.

Light from outside entered through the open door and two long windows set up under the ceiling. A workbench, comfortably familiar, took up the right-hand wall, with several stools shoved in under the empty bench.

There was no place for heating in this building; he needed a vent to keep from being suffocated in his sleep. 

To the left, the wall was left open, and covered with drawings done in charcoal and graphite. Mechanical specs; Kalash could read some of them, but most were well beyond his ability. The floor was dusty - a product of the air flow system, but there were no spiderwebs hanging from the corners of the room. Straight ahead was a doorway - a huge one twice the size of the doors to the Assembly - bolted shut from this side. 

The bolt was rusty, and it took some maneuvering to tap it out and open with his hammer. Rusty squeaking hinges, too. Any lubricant was long since gone from the workbench along with the tools.

Pulling the great stone slab of a door open took all of his strength, but he managed to peek before setting his shoulder to the stone. Nothing moved in the space beyond. Safe enough, he guessed. 

Once the door was completely open and flat against the wall, Kalash stepped back and took a further look. It was a closet. There was a golem. It was fit into the center of the closet, with shelving on either side. For the moment Kalash didn’t notice the contents of the shelves. He was too busy looking at the creature. Was it a creature? Or an automaton? Golems weren’t alive, were they?

Formed out of stone, the creature was twice as tall as Kalash, and twice as broad. Strong, made for fighting, possibly used for labor - why else would it be in a maintenance building?

The golem had eyes, but those were fixed over his head on the wall opposite. It was built to simulate a dwarf of gigantic stature. Kalash moved forward and tapped on the breast twice. It did not activate. Well, that was a relief. Kalash was not a fighter, and he did not want to be attacked by a guard set millennia ago.

Of course, if he could find the control rod, then he might just be that much safer from anything that found its way into this thaig. On the other hand, Kalash did not much want to have company here. Yes, he felt lonely from time to time. Alright, he felt lonely all the time. Even when Kalash was in a crowded room, he felt lonely. That was because there were few who understood his choice in lifestyle. Being with his own family for any length of time felt oppressive.

Nothing on the shelves looked even slightly like a control rod. Bits and pieces littered the stone shelving and none of it looked useful. Or unbroken. No need to clutter up his pack with any of this. Kalash closed the closet doors before leaving to search for shelter. The golem would keep. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Kalash Aeducan found a small dwelling nearby. No remnants of any inhabitants to give him an idea of who had lived there. Even the firepit in the main room had been cleaned out. An alcove off to the side - once separated from the room by a curtain long gone - held a garderobe and a bathing trough. Looking down into the garderobe showed nothing but a stone tube that ended in darkness. Space under the trough could be filled with coals to heat the water up above. No spigot or pipes to draw the water. Any water would have to be hauled in buckets from the river. If Kalash were to stay here, he might put a cistern in to save water. It could then be drawn down into the tub. He would have to think about it.

Meanwhile, no matter how longingly he looked at the bathing tun and thought of a hot bath, it would not be anytime soon that he enjoyed one. There was, however, the possibility of a hot meal waiting for him. Checking the lock on the stone door, he shot the bolt and set about organizing a fire, a nice stew, and a bed in which one could stretch out. Dropping his pack on the sleeping platform, Kalash looked out over his canteen: mushrooms, moss, and dried strips of nug meat for cooking. 

Later, filled with a good meal, wrapped up in his blanket, head resting on his pack, Kalash made plans before falling asleep.


End file.
